Optimal vehicle dynamics control for combined longitudinal and lateral autonomous vehicle guidance

This contribution proposes a model-based predictive control approach for combined longitudinal and lateral vehicle guidance. The controller, which has been designed for an automotive collision avoidance system, aims at following a desired evasion trajectory at the handling limits. Thereby, the trajectory following problem is decomposed in a path following and a velocity trajectory tracking problem using the wheel steering angle and the longitudinal acceleration as control inputs. There are two major advantages of this approach. First, the a priori knowledge of the evasion trajectory is explicitly incorporated into the computation of control inputs. Second, the combined transmission of longitudinal and lateral tire forces is considered in the sense of an integrated vehicle dynamics control approach. Experimental results show the potential of the introduced control scheme.